


Turnsole

by ideallyqualia



Series: UshiOi [4]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Final Haikyuu Quest, M/M, Plants, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 13:28:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6081159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideallyqualia/pseuds/ideallyqualia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The forest is his garden, and Oikawa doesn't know it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turnsole

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposting from a dreamwidth valentine's day event.

Ushijima cupped his hand under a flower and helped its stem back up. The wind was blowing strong, and some of the plants wound around the steps were being blown out of place, knocking into each other and chiming small notes that blended into the wind.

He stepped back slowly, his hands low past his waist to soothe and quiet them. "This is fine, right?"

The line of azaleas next to the steps bent and jingled again, wilting and drifting against a weakly blowing gust. Ushijima's shoulders pulled down with a breath.

He set to straightening them again, placating them with a touch that smoothed over their leaves. Their ringing faded to a faint textured toll and died. Ushijima tentatively pressed a foot onto a step, and when none of them protested, he continued and went inside.

A few rabbits scampered around on the floor, their feet thumping the ground after a few pauses. Ushijima left the door open, and one scooted to the wall next to it, leaning into the breeze with its nose.

Ushijima reached for an apple hanging off a tree branch of the wall. The branch swayed a little from being pulled, and it gently swung back into place. Ushijima leaned against the side of a table and bit into his apple. His hand landed on the wooden surface, and it slid with his shifting weight as he turned to face the door.

He heard a distant howl from the cluster of trees ahead. The rabbits snapped their heads up, ears straight and alert, and all the flowers outside shook a ringing racket again, louder and faster. Ushijima stepped into the doorway and joined the rabbits poking their heads outside.

"Get _o_ _ff_ of me." Someone ducked out from the trees, and in the rustling, a wolf was sent rolling over the grass. It whimpered and limped to the side, subdued.

Ushijima raised an eyebrow. "Can I help you?" He glanced over, slowing on the stranger's head and eyeing the royal trim on his clothing.

He dusted himself off. "No, I'm not looking for anything." He looked up. His nose wrinkled with his narrowing eyebrows. "What is that?"

Ushijima gestured to his home. "This? It's a tree."

"It has a doorway," he said in a dead tone.

"I live here."

"Oh," he said, his voice drawing into a long note, almost a question. His eyes glided over the angrily shaking flowers. "Well. That's fine." He waved his hand at the tree's direction. "I'm not here for any of this. I'm leaving." He turned and walked away, striding past the wolf and pointedly walking right in front of it, his steps weighing stomps for a moment.

The flowers rode out their momentum into motionlessness. The wolf slinked back into the copse of trees. Ushijima kept looking into the distance, his frown wearing thin and thoughtful on his lips.

 

* * *

 

Over the next couple days, Ushijima still heard the flowers ringing at the same tonal frenzy as the time they met. The same pitch, the same disregard for noise; whoever the person was, they were sticking around, and the flowers could tell.

Ushijima's hand lifted his sword, testing the weight fitting into his hand. His fingers comfortably grasped the hilt. There was a decaying tree on the edge of the forest by the river, and he needed to cut the dying branches off.

The sunlight's peak above the hill in the distance stretched across the grass as he climbed to the top. The stretch of forest dipped down below the hill and reached the river along a patch of thick grass. Ushijima squinted against a flare of light in the grass patch.

He travelled down the other side of the hill, his feet stumbling a little in the wandering incline of slope. It pulled his feet faster until he reached the bottom, and he continued down into the tall thick plotted grass. He waded his arms through to the source of the light, tapping his sword gently through instead of cutting across.

Ushijima stopped and stared down. Someone was sitting in the grass with glowing hands. His head lifted, and his eyes narrowed.

"Aren't you nosy."

Ushijima sheathed his sword and maintained his look patiently, his eyes and mouth held neutral. "Still not looking for anything?"

"I'm busy with something."

Ushijima paused. "What are you doing?"

"Research."

He remained unresponsive, and Ushijima shifted. "The light is disturbing the plants."

"How do you know? Did you ask them?" he cut dryly.

"I did."

He made a dismissive motion with his hand. "You're breaking my concentration."

Ushijima inched a step away, his frown deepening and eyebrows creasing. His mouth opened, and closed, and he lapsed into a brief stare until he was met with another disposing wave.

He left. As long as there wasn't a fire, it shouldn't cause _harm_ , so Ushijima left it alone and returned to journeying the riverside to find the afflicted tree.

 

* * *

 

Ushijima needed to transplant a few roses from the forest to protect them from the weather. They had fallen ill, and Ushijima didn't want them suffering in the wind and cold dropping in the next couple days. He approached the tree marking the clump of roses in the forest and stepped around it.

The stranger whipped around. "You don't have to be _everywhere_."

"You've been here for several days now," Ushijima said. "Have you fulfilled your purpose?"

"I'm not here for any reason." He turned and crossed his arms, his cloak flapping.

"Can you please not disturb the flowers? Your magic is making the weather colder and upsetting them."

"I'm not doing anything."

Ushijima's mouth pulled into a slight frown, his eyes following. "One of you is lying."

"It isn't me, you know." He stepped close to a rose bush, rumbling a question to himself. "There's something off about this forest. You understand that, right?"

"I understand that it's alive," Ushijima said, his head dipping down a little.

He returned his own frown. "I have things to do. I'm going." He walked away.

Ushijima kneeled down in front of a bush and moved on to the roses.

 

* * *

  

"Do you need something?" Ushijima asked. He tilted on his feet, his weight shifting and pulling his heel off the ground as he leaned to look at someone crouched near the azaleas, a hand on a leaf. The flowers were shaking a furious chiming storm, and the azalea under his hand kept swatting against him.

He stood up, calmer than the last few times. "What is it?"

"You're standing next to my home."

"Coincidence. Something else brought me here." He frowned and gestured at the tree. "What _is_ this? I haven't really looked at this before."

"Do you want me to show you, if... You're...?" Ushijima trailed off, his head tilting slightly.

"I'm Oikawa." He stepped around Ushijima and headed to the front steps.

Ushijima turned and followed him with a glance. "I'm Ushijima Wakatoshi."

"How do you _open_ this?" Oikawa tugged on the door. "Did you seal this with magic? I can't tell what it is."

"It's not magic." Ushijima nudged him aside and pulled the door open smoothly.

Oikawa followed behind him and turned his head, his eyes flitting against his critical frown. "The rest of this is magic, then."

"No."

Oikawa's eyes closed with a self-assured set of his mouth. "It's magic. A tree can't do this on its own."

A vine circled Oikawa's ankle, and in a quick tug, it snapped against his leg and tightened. Oikawa jerked his leg.

"That _hurt_." He stooped and yanked it off. "Don't you trim these?"

Ushijima didn't remove his eyes from watching. "No. It did that on its own."

Oikawa grumbled and kicked it away. He turned to glance elsewhere. "It's a completely ordinary tree," he said, drawing his voice through an imitative pitch. He reached for the bark wall and rested his hand on it.

A rabbit hopped up onto the seat near Oikawa's leg. It scratched its foot behind its ear and thumped its other foot on the chair.

Oikawa looked back up. His hand drifted to the branches growing out of the wall. "And it's normal for tree branches to grow on the inside?"

"Its fruit grows inside."

Oikawa brushed his hand over his hair. "I don't think this is it," he mumbled to himself.

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing," Oikawa said. He tapped a finger on his chin and reined his mouth in tight as he stared at the bark.

Ushijima stepped in closer. "Were you trying to find a source of magic in the forest?"

"I wasn't trying to find anything."

Ushijima drew his eyes between Oikawa and the wall. "If you're trying to look for magic, you're not going to find it here."

Oikawa let out a breath, unsettling a bit of his hair. "I accept your advice, then," he said, a note of a sigh still quiet and lingering.

Ushijima redirected his attention to the open door, the landscape visible underneath the clear sky. "Have you been sleeping outside this past week?"

"No," Oikawa denied. "I don't sleep outside." His mouth struggled around an unfixed shape of words, and he closed it.

"Would you like to sleep in here?"

Oikawa alternated his feet and glanced around again, his mouth intent on the thought pinning him to Ushijima. "Fine."

 

* * *

 

Oikawa dragged his hands down the sides of his head. There was barely any light in the predawn outline of moonlight around the door, but shades of pink promise edged the horizon.

Oikawa stretched and grasped the top of his back, rubbing and rousing a dulled pleasant burn to wake himself up. He stood up and shuffled to a tree branch.

His hand reached for an apple and curled around empty air. He shifted back and grumbled. The branch was bent now, held close to the wall.

The sound of muffled footsteps called Oikawa to the staircase from the second floor, and he found Ushijima descending the steps in a delaying speed, his mouth covered by his hand. "Morning, Oikawa," he murmured sleepily, intoning in a deep mumble.

Oikawa turned away. "Morning," he said in a short greeting.

Ushijima trudged to the door and opened it. A few rabbits and birds were already inside, but a clump of them filled in as soon as Ushijima let them inside. Oikawa stumbled backward to make room for them.

"First thing in the morning?" Oikawa asked.

Ushijima nodded unevenly. "Sometimes they forget to come in the night before." He shuffled to a row of gardenias growing in the floor and picked up a watering can, drizzling water over them and bending closer to them. "Morning," he said quietly.

Oikawa raised an eyebrow. "You really talk to them..."

"Hm? I do." Ushijima placed the can down and rubbed at his eyes. "Do you want something to eat?" He picked an apple off a branch and offered it to Oikawa.

"For convenience, I'll take it." Oikawa accepted it and sunk his teeth in.

Ushijima rubbed at the back of his neck. His hair stuck out, drifting at odd ends and bed-rumpled with his clothes. Oikawa's face concentrated around his gathering frown, narrowed to the dishevelment framing Ushijima's eyes and barely awake softness in his mouth.

"Don't you do anything to your hair or clothes at all?"

Ushijima swept his hand to the back of his hair, disturbing it more. "I didn't think about it."

"Didn't even think about getting up from bed..." Oikawa remarked.

Ushijima's head turned to a rabbit struggling to reach the edge of the table. He lifted it up and balanced it in his arms, the momentum of the movement leaving it fumbling to sit up. Its fur ruffled against his arm and its face squashed, its feet scrabbling and holding on to Ushijima's arm.

Oikawa turned away at the sensation of air in his chest, like there was too _much_ inflating his lungs and digging a self-fulfilling sinkhole of air forcing him to keep breathing. He caught the dawning sunshine filtering through cracks in the door and faced it completely, resolutely, his mouth shut to the dead words sitting in him.

**Author's Note:**

> (General A/N that exists at the end of all my fics): I find unsolicited concrit really rude, I'm not looking for any. Please don't tell me someone was OOC/something happened you didn't like/it's too short/etc. in any bookmarks or comments.


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